Within the last hour or two, I've seen a trailer for a prog. this
evening (John Curry: Floating on Ice; 17:30 on BBC News); it contained
some archive footage.

It was shown stretched/squashed.

It's depressing that such is still so common. I _suppose_ it's
understandable (though IMO still not forgivable - how hard _is_ it?)
when an obituary report has to be drawn up at short notice for someone
who has just died, and the material dredged up by whatever retrieval
system they use comes up in a mixture of formats. But for a premade
half-hour prog. like this one - where the _majority_ of material will be
in 4:3 (as it will; his career high was pre-shortscreen) - it is IMO
extremely shoddy. Especially when it gets into a trailer for the prog.,
for crissake!

It gives the impression that either they don't know _how_ to switch to pillarbox, or (they're young and thus think archive material is ancient
and thus they) don't _care_. Either of which are depressing.

Sorry, rant over. It's just declining (technical) standards again.

Perhaps - for less-savvy programme creators - there should be a
"pillarbox" button in the mixing desk (or programme creation software; I
assume "mixing desk" is a dying concept), made fairly prominent, so "I
don't know how to do that" is less of an excuse.

[Almost as bad is where they crop old video to _pretend_ it was shot in widescreen - an awful lot of old pop music material they do this with;
but at least there the aspect ratio is right - they just cut off the
feet, and sometimes the top of the heads, of the performers. )-:]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"... all your hard work in the hands of twelve people too stupid to get off jury
duty." CSI, 200x

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Yes although I cannot see it any more, there really should be no need for it
as even now most tellies can have this adjueustedadjusted on menus, it would make far more sense to do it at programme production time.

Brian

--

This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...
briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote in message news:MyDDL28lw6BiFwYZ@a.a...

Within the last hour or two, I've seen a trailer for a prog. this evening (John Curry: Floating on Ice; 17:30 on BBC News); it contained some
archive footage.

It was shown stretched/squashed.

It's depressing that such is still so common. I _suppose_ it's
understandable (though IMO still not forgivable - how hard _is_ it?) when
an obituary report has to be drawn up at short notice for someone who has just died, and the material dredged up by whatever retrieval system they
use comes up in a mixture of formats. But for a premade half-hour prog.
like this one - where the _majority_ of material will be in 4:3 (as it
will; his career high was pre-shortscreen) - it is IMO extremely shoddy. Especially when it gets into a trailer for the prog., for crissake!

It gives the impression that either they don't know _how_ to switch to pillarbox, or (they're young and thus think archive material is ancient
and thus they) don't _care_. Either of which are depressing.

Sorry, rant over. It's just declining (technical) standards again.

Perhaps - for less-savvy programme creators - there should be a
"pillarbox" button in the mixing desk (or programme creation software; I assume "mixing desk" is a dying concept), made fairly prominent, so "I
don't know how to do that" is less of an excuse.

[Almost as bad is where they crop old video to _pretend_ it was shot in widescreen - an awful lot of old pop music material they do this with; but
at least there the aspect ratio is right - they just cut off the feet, and sometimes the top of the heads, of the performers. )-:]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"... all your hard work in the hands of twelve people too stupid to get
off
jury
duty." CSI, 200x

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG@255soft.uk> wrote in message news:MyDDL28lw6BiFwYZ@a.a...

Within the last hour or two, I've seen a trailer for a prog. this
evening (John Curry: Floating on Ice; 17:30 on BBC News); it contained
some archive footage.

It was shown stretched/squashed.

It's depressing that such is still so common.

Unusual to find that on BBC; their policy of placing all 4:3 material
inside a 720x576 16:9 SD frame by default was intended to prevent stretched/squashed images being transmitted by accident.

Unfortunately it also degrades the picture quality (to the point where
I find it unwatchable) because only 540(?) horizontal pixels are used
for the active 4:3 image. The process also adds an additional
unneccessary deinterlace->reinterlace stage.

So another case of 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater' just to
achieve something that probably looked good on paper.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

In article <suld5j$8ma$1@dont-email.me>, Alexander <none@nowhere.fr> wrote:

Unusual to find that on BBC; their policy of placing all 4:3 material
inside a 720x576 16:9 SD frame by default was intended to prevent >stretched/squashed images being transmitted by accident.

Unfortunately it also degrades the picture quality (to the point where
I find it unwatchable) because only 540(?) horizontal pixels are used
for the active 4:3 image. The process also adds an additional
unneccessary deinterlace->reinterlace stage.

On the other hand, if they are compressing to a fixed bit-rate, the
quality of those 540 pixels should be higher than normal, since very
few bits will be required for the black bars.

-- Richard

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)